Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind: How regulatory mode affects inter- temporal choices Lucia Mannetti*, Susanne Leder**, Libera Insalata*, Antonio Pierro*, Tory Higgins***, Arie Kruglanski**** * University of Rome, La Sapienza, Italy ** Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany *** Columbia University, New York, USA **** University of Maryland, College Park, USA

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind…. In every-day life people have to decide whether –to get an immediate pleasure (e.g. tasting an ice-cream = luxuriating during summer, like the grasshopper) or –to renounce to it in order to get the delayed benefits (decreased body weight = storing food for next winter, like the patient ant)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Psychologists talk of: –delay of gratification (e.g. Mischel, Ayduck, Mendoza-Denton, 2003) –self-control and will-power (e.g. Baumeister, Vohs, 2003), Economists of: –temporal discounting –constant discount rate

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Neuro-economy ( McClure, et al ): when making inter-temporal choices two neural systems are competing: –the limbic (i.e., affective) system (lower, automatic); –the lateral prefrontal cortex and associated structures that are typically viewed as more cognitive regions (recently evolved)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Which factors will increase the strength of the two different systems? –Previous studies : cognitive load, drug and alcohol consumption, sexual arousal reduce strength of cognitive s. (Ariely, Lowenstein, 2003) we hypothesize the influence of two regulatory mode orientations, namely locomotion and assessment (Higgins, et al. 2003; Kruglanski, et al. 2000).

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind the aspect of self-regulation concerned with –movement from state to state –committing the psychological resources that will initiate and maintain goal-related movement LOCOMOTION

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind The aspect of self-regulation concerned with: – critically evaluation in order to judge relative quality – determination of value or importance of something – critical appraisal as a guide for action. ASSESSMENT

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind According to Camerer, et al.(2005) assessment is like controlled processes and locomotion is like automatic processes. locomotion and assessment can be made more salient by situational factors

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Therefore, we hypothesized: –if locomotion > assessment = more impulsive choices –if assessment > locomotion = more far- sighted choices We experimentally induced either a locomotion orientation or an assessment

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Method 40 students (20 females and 20 males) from University of Rome La Sapienza participated in the study on voluntary bases (mean age = 24 years) 2 experimental phases presented to participants as involving two independent studies. –1 st intended to manipulate regulatory modes, following Avnet and Higgins’ (2002)procedure –2 nd : inter-temporal choice task

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind In the locomotion condition, participants were asked to “think of a day when: –they had made many different things, –they had finished one project and did not wait long before starting a new one, –they had decided to do something and could not wait to get started”.

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind In the assessment condition, they were asked to “think of a day when: –they had compared themselves with other people, –they had thought about their positive and negative characteristics, –they had critiqued work done by others or themselves”.

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Choice tasks: 2 alternatives presented on a screen, (earlier reward always on the left) Responses made by pressing one of two buttons corresponding to the location of the options

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Participants informed that they would receive money corresponding to one of their choices (randomly selected) Participants were allowed as much time to respond as desired The task took about 20 minutes

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind First, 2 questions to get acclimatized to the task. Then, in random order, all the 48 choice pairs generated by combining: –the amount of the early reward –the delay to the later reward –the percent increase of later reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Amount early reward (AER): 5 or 40 Euros Delay of later reward (DLR): 2 or 4 or 6 weeks Percent increase of later reward (PILR): 1%, or 3%, or 5%, or 10%, or 15%, or 25%, or 35%, or 50%. Choices coded “0” when early reward, and “1” when delayed reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind 2 (Regulatory mode) x 2 (AER) x 3 (DLR) x 8 (PILR) Anova with the last 3 factors as repeated measures. significant between-subjects effect of regulatory mode (F1,38 = 6,553, p <.01; ηp 2 =.15):

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind within-subject main effects of: –AER (F1,38 = 62,742, p <.0001, ηp 2 =.62) –DLR (F2,76 = 43,454, p <.001, ηp 2 =.53)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind PILR (F7,266 = 58,627, p <.0001, ηp 2 =.61). Choices of later reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Regulatory mode by AER by PILR interaction (F7,266 = 2,379 p <.02, ηp 2 =.06).

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Results of this study: –confirm previous findings – show that people may be more or less far-sighted as a function of the experimentally induced regulatory mode –In other words regulatory mode is one of the factors that can explain “intra- individual” variability in impatience (Camerer, et al., 2005).

Thanks …